"The most important mammalian fossil of this kind
is the elephant from Mt. Holly. We give Professor Thompson's description
of it:

"Elephas primogenius, Blumenbach. It
is a remarkable fact, that in making the Rutland and Burlington Railroad,
which extends from Burlington to Bellows Falls, two of the most interesting
fossils ever found in New England were brought to light. These were
the remains of an elephant and a whale. The former were found in Mt.
Holly, in 1848, and the latter in Charlotte, in 1849.

"The Rutland and Burlington Railroad crosses the Green
Mountains in the township of Mt. Holly, at an elevation of 1415 feet
above the level of the ocean, and the bones of the fossil elephant were
found at that height. It is in a peat bed east of the summit station
that these bones are found. The basin in which the peat is situated
appears to have been originally filled with water, and to have been
a favorite resort for beaver, a large proportion of the materials which
formed the lower part of the peat consisting of billets of wood, about
eighteen inches long, which had been cut off at both ends, drawn into
the water and divested of the bark by the beaver, for food. The peat
was fifteen feet deep before the excavation was made for the railroad.

"In making this excavation, the workmen found at the
bottom of the bed, resting upon gravel which separated it from the rock
below, a huge tooth. The depth of the peat at that place was eleven
feet. Soon afterwards one of the tusks was found, about eighty feet
from the place of the tooth mentioned above, which was a grinder. Subsequently
the other tusk and several of the bones of the animal were found near
the same place. These bones and teeth were submitted to the inspection
of Professor Agassiz, who pronounced them to be extinct species of elephant.
The directors of the R.& B.R.R. to whom they belong, placed them in
the museum of the University of Vermont, for preservation, and for the
illustration of our fossil geology.

"The grinder is in an excellent state of preservation,
and weighed eight pounds, and the length of its grinding surface is
about eight inches. The tusks are somewhat decayed, and one of them
badly broken. The cord, drawn in a straight line from the base to the
point of the most perfect tuck , measures sixty inches, and the longest
perpendicular, let fall from that to the inner curve of the tusk, measures
nineteen inches. The length of the tusk, measured along the curve on
the outer surface, is eighty inches, and its greatest circumference
twelve inches. The circumference has diminshed very much, since the
tusk was taken from the peat bed, on account of shrinkage in drying,
and several longitudinal cracks have been found in it, extending its
whole length, and it was found necessary to wind it with wire to prevent
it from splitting to pieces."

In 1858 remains of another elephant were found in
Richmond, which are now in the Cabinet of Vermont University.

The fossil ham of some ruminant has been found in
Hartford; and the ham of a deer in the alluvium of Grand Isle; the latter
specimen is in the Cabinet of Vermont University.

Other fossils are found in a cave at Chittenden,-
the bones of small animals, such as are now alive."